The Hidden Costs of Enterprise Mobility: Understanding, Validating and Controlling Your Mobility Budget

Worldwide growth in technology spending hovered around 7 percent for 2007. But worldwide sales of notebooks and other mobile computing devices skyrocketed by 37 percent in a single quarter of 2007. Over that same quarter, mobile phone sales were up 15 percent compared to the previous year's figures.

Why is mobility spending so much more robust than the overall technology market? Two trends are at work. First, people enjoy the freedom, fun, and connectivity that come with personal mobility. Second, and even more powerfully, companies enjoy the increased productivity and competitive leverage they get from employees who can work anywhere—at home, on the road, at client sites, in the field. The conventional wisdom is that mobility has become an essential tool for modern business—that without a mobile workforce, you can't compete effectively.

But how do you know?
The conventional wisdom is right...if you know the true costs of mobility...and you know that the benefits outweigh those costs. But...how do you know for sure?

With personal mobility, each individual consumer makes the choice whether a mobile device or service is worth what it costs. But businesses have a responsibility to employees and shareholders that goes far beyond the consumer's choice about how to spend discretionary income. Far too often, business decisions about mobility amount to no more than the personal preferences of management. In other words, "we like our personal mobility, so let's give that same capability to our employees."

When you move beyond a personal choice to a corporate policy, however, you have a responsibility to make sure you can validate & control your mobility budget. All too often, the cost-benefit analysis is incomplete or altogether missing in executive decisions about who has mobile connectivity, and how that connectivity is managed. Often times the reason gut feeling rules over objective analysis is that hard data on the true and full costs of mobility are hard to come by. Unknowns are inevitably—and understandably—ignored.

iPass Offers Insight
The good news is that iPass is making that analysis easier. For greater insight into the true costs of mobility and how to manage them, download this white paper on the hidden costs of enterprise mobility.

And if the white paper gets you thinking about some of the ways your company may be wasting money unnecessarily, check out the iPass mobility calculator. This innovative tool provides eye-opening insight into hidden mobile access costs, based on your company's specific policies and practices for employee mobility.

Understanding those true costs is the first step to bringing them under control; so you know you're getting full value from your mobility solutions.

Download whitepaper: The Hidden Costs of Enterprise Mobility (PDF, 290K)